I would like to dual boot XP, and OpenBSD. Here comes my question. I understand with XP, we have drive C for XP, and after that other drives as well. In my case, I have drive C for XP, and drive H for my downloads and such. Could I keep both drive C and H? A while ago, I was following a tutorial for OpenBSD. It didn't say to keep both drives because the tutorial was for OpenBSD installation. I was running low on disk space. I will get the size of my drives and post below. Oh, a few other things. I am new to *nix. I chose OpenBSD. In my other thread, I wanted FreeBSD, now I want OpenBSD. Also, I wanted networking. I don't think I want networking anymore. I am not sure.

You require space for a primary partition able to house the OpenBSD install, within the address space your BIOS can reach. If necessary, you can resize one of your existing partitions to make room, for that I would recommend a gparted cd.

The installation documentation on the OpenBSD website, is first rate, be sure to have it available during an install.

If your C: and H: drives are NTFS, bear in mind that OpenBSD will not be able to read them by default.

The support for NTFS can be enabled in the kernel by editing and re-compiling kernel. One of rare instances when the kernel compilation is actually necessary. I am not sure if it can be enabled with config utility. I am
almost sure it can not but I never use NTFS so I am not 100% sure.

The support for NTFS can be enabled in the kernel by editing and re-compiling kernel. One of rare instances when the kernel compilation is actually necessary. I am not sure if it can be enabled with config utility. I am
almost sure it can not but I never use NTFS so I am not 100% sure.

It can't, support is not compiled in by default.. the kernel configuration has "option NTFS" commented out, uncommenting it passes -DNTFS to the compiler, without it several sections of code are omitted.

I wouldn't use it though, it's marked experimental.. if you want to use BSD, just forget about NTFS, it's a horrible file system.

I understand with XP, we have drive C for XP, and after that other drives as well.

Each hard drive installed on a system can have a maximum of four primary MBR partitions defined. Windows requires one primary partition for its boot partition which it will typically letter C:. Note that drive letters are a convention used by Windows itself to abstract the underlying MBR partitions configured on the disk.

Quote:

Could I keep both drive C and H?

Given that you are not mentioning drives, D:, E:, F:, or G:, my guess is that you have at least one of your three remaining primary partitions configured as an extended partition. How these drive letters are distributed amongst the remaining partitions cannot be gleaned from the information provided. To determine what partitions have been used & what partitions are still available, look at the output of the fdisk command-line utility or right-click on "My Computer", select "Manage", followed by choosing "Disk Management" (if I recall Windows XP correctly...). There, you should be able to determine how the drive has been divided up. Be forewarned that you may have used all available partitions. If this is indeed the case, you will need to:

save all important data.

delete and/or reconfigure the currently configured MBR partitions in order to make one primary MBR available for OpenBSD.

If you are ultimately asking what is required to install OpenBSD, note that OpenBSD 4.3 (& earlier versions...) must be installed in a primary MBR partition. One of the new features coming in OpenBSD 4.4 (whose target release is 1 November 2008...) is that it will be able to be installed in either a primary or extended partition.

As for how to install OpenBSD, as has been mentioned earlier, study Section 4 for the FAQ:

Section 4.8 covers the specifics of multibooting, but you should take the time to familiarize yourself with all preliminary information found in Sections 4.1 - 4.7 as well. You will develop needed perspective by doing so.

Multibooting is not complicated, but mistakes made during configuration can result in data being lost. It is highly recommended that you back up all important data in all partitions before attempting to make signficant changes to either partitions used by Windows, the installation of OpenBSD, or the configuration of whatever boot manager is used afterwards.

The real story is that the developer who developed the NTFS driver left the OpenBSD project many years ago, & to date, no one has fully taken on ownership of the code. This isn't unique to the OpenBSD project either. Most NTFS support offered by non-Microsoft operating systems is simply an attempt at providing a minimal level of compatibility usually based upon an older version of NTFS.

If one does enable NTFS support in OpenBSD, expect to merely read from NTFS partitions. Writing to NTFS partitions can crash execution to corrupt data.

Quote:

if you want to use BSD, just forget about NTFS, it's a horrible file system.

The remainder of the real story is that Microsoft continually tweaks NTFS with each new release of Windows. This is why the Samba project & companies such as EMC & Network Appliance are continually checking their external storage products to see if they are still compliant to Microsoft's moving target. Is it particularly horrible? No, it is more accurate to say that all the details are not available to those not wearing an employee badge sporting the Microsoft logo.

It was not committed, the discussion on @misc is a troll by someone named Neko.. he wanted NTFS support so he tried trolling.

Pay attention Oko, the topic was misleading sure.. but this person, a beginner, wanted them to "merge" NTFS-3G into the base. (Clearly ignorant of the fact it uses FUSE, which isn't ported.. and again, shouldn't be.).

Getting back on topic for php111, starting with a little level-setting. Please excuse me if this is review, php111:

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The MBR (sector #0 on a hard drive) contains a small boot program and a partition table, holding only enough information to manage four partitions. When you "boot" a hard drive on an architecture that uses MBR, the BIOS loads this sector into memory, and if a valid MBR program is found, passes control to it. To get more than four partitions, a primary partition may be pointed at an extended partition table to further carve up the disk.

The MBR area includes not only sector #0, but the rest of the sectors in that track (0-62). This area is not used by operating systems, so it may be used for things like multiboot managers, and extended partition tables.

The MBR partitioning system is used at a different "layer" than OpenBSD's partitioning system. Briefly, on MBR architectures you assign a single MBR partition to OpenBSD. If OpenBSD is the only OS using the drive, you assign that MBR partition to the entire drive.

Whether or not MBR partitions are used, BSD uses the disklabel to manage it's own partitioning. MBRs were an invention dating back to the IBM PC/XT, but they are still used today on about six different architectures, such as the commonly used i386 and amd64 archs, as well as zaurus, landisk, even macppc.

Beginning with 4.4, OpenBSD may be installed in an extended partition if necessary.
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If your hard drive has unallocated space, you can create a new MBR partition for it in that space.

If your hard drive does not have any unallocated space left, you will have to "resize" either your C: or your H: drive. This may or may not be easy, depending on the filesystem in use. If you're using FAT32, then you can "shrink" the data in a partition with the fips program, found in the /pub/OpenBSD/<release>/tools/fips directory at your nearest mirror.

If you are using NTFS, then you will have to use another method. There are 3rd party commercial products, such as Partition Magic, or Linux and gpartd ... but the easiest way, I would think, would be by backing up the 3GB in use on your H drive, make it smaller, (e.g.: 4GB), restore the data, then use newly unallocated space for OpenBSD.

Thank you everyone for all your replies. I didn't see this thread a lot earlier because this forum is having a problem sending out email notifications. My email is current. I do have email notifications turned on. I am going to make a thread at the Administrators.

To ocicat: I have included an attachment with Disk Management. Will someone if not you, please take a look at it? Should I or not get rid of H:? Also, about NTFS. Are there anyway to configure it?

Quote:

Originally Posted by ocicat

Each hard drive installed on a system can have a maximum of four primary MBR partitions defined. Windows requires one primary partition for its boot partition which it will typically letter C:. Note that drive letters are a convention used by Windows itself to abstract the underlying MBR partitions configured on the disk.

Given that you are not mentioning drives, D:, E:, F:, or G:, my guess is that you have at least one of your three remaining primary partitions configured as an extended partition. How these drive letters are distributed amongst the remaining partitions cannot be gleaned from the information provided. To determine what partitions have been used & what partitions are still available, look at the output of the fdisk command-line utility or right-click on "My Computer", select "Manage", followed by choosing "Disk Management" (if I recall Windows XP correctly...). There, you should be able to determine how the drive has been divided up. Be forewarned that you may have used all available partitions. If this is indeed the case, you will need to:

save all important data.

delete and/or reconfigure the currently configured MBR partitions in order to make one primary MBR available for OpenBSD.

If you are ultimately asking what is required to install OpenBSD, note that OpenBSD 4.3 (& earlier versions...) must be installed in a primary MBR partition. One of the new features coming in OpenBSD 4.4 (whose target release is 1 November 2008...) is that it will be able to be installed in either a primary or extended partition.

As for how to install OpenBSD, as has been mentioned earlier, study Section 4 for the FAQ:

Section 4.8 covers the specifics of multibooting, but you should take the time to familiarize yourself with all preliminary information found in Sections 4.1 - 4.7 as well. You will develop needed perspective by doing so.

Multibooting is not complicated, but mistakes made during configuration can result in data being lost. It is highly recommended that you back up all important data in all partitions before attempting to make signficant changes to either partitions used by Windows, the installation of OpenBSD, or the configuration of whatever boot manager is used afterwards.

I have included an attachment with Disk Management. Will someone if not you, please take a look at it?

The screenshot provided doesn't quite provide what I hoped. It appears that you or someone else has renamed what typically would be the D: to H:. As for determining what type of partition (primary or extended...) in which your C: & H: drives reside, the Status column at the top should provide this information. Left-click on the right-hand edge delineating the column header & drag to the right. This should expand the column's width such that you can read all the information in that column. What you are hoping to find is which partitions are primary and/or extended partitions.

Quote:

Should I or not get rid of H:?

It appears that all the space available on the one disk has been allocated between C: & H:. Since I don't recall that Windows XP had an integrated utility for nondestructively resizing partitions as Vista does, right-click on your C: or H: drives to see if the local menu which is then displayed shows options for shrinking the partition. If it doesn't, you have two options:

Use one of the utilities mentioned earlier by jggimi to resize your existing partitions.

Basically, one needs to uncomment "option NTFS" within /usr/src/sys/arch/i386/conf/GENERIC followed by recompiling the kernel. Unless you are already familiar with building large software products, I would not recommend that you undertake enabling NTFS as your first project with OpenBSD.

The screenshot provided doesn't quite provide what I hoped. It appears that you or someone else has renamed what typically would be the D: to H:. As for determining what type of partition (primary or extended...) in which your C: & H: drives reside, the Status column at the top should provide this information. Left-click on the right-hand edge delineating the column header & drag to the right. This should expand the column's width such that you can read all the information in that column. What you are hoping to find is which partitions are primary and/or extended partitions.

It appears that all the space available on the one disk has been allocated between C: & H:. Since I don't recall that Windows XP had an integrated utility for nondestructively resizing partitions as Vista does, right-click on your C: or H: drives to see if the local menu which is then displayed shows options for shrinking the partition. If it doesn't, you have two options:

Use one of the utilities mentioned earlier by jggimi to resize your existing partitions.

Basically, one needs to uncomment "option NTFS" within /usr/src/sys/arch/i386/conf/GENERIC followed by recompiling the kernel. Unless you are already familiar with building large software products, I would not recommend that you undertake enabling NTFS as your first project with OpenBSD.

When replying, you don't need to retain the entire message in which you are responding. Cut out all that is no longer pertinent, or press Post Reply(on the left-hand side...) instead of Quote(which is on the right side...).

Quote:

Originally Posted by php111

What size of a partition should I make XP?

This is up to you for you understand your needs better than any of us do. Given that you have greater than 230GB available, you have a lot of latitude.

Depending upon how serious you want to learn & explore OpenBSD, you should probably expect to install OpenBSD more than once. As you become more familiar with the system, you will soon find where you will want to revisit decisions & assumptions made earlier.

Lastly, I cannot stress enough that taking the time now to study the FAQ in its entirety will save you significant time & aggravation in the future.

If the answer is "Yes" to all three of these questions, you need not touch your hard drive at all. You can install OpenBSD in a USB device, and boot it. USB storage (memory stick or hard drive) are attached as SCSI devices, using umass(4) and sd(4).